Manufactured products are increasingly packaged in shelf ready packaging, which allows the supermarket staff to install several products in one movement instead of having to place each article on the shelf separately. Various types of shelf ready packages have been proposed in the past. A basic solution is for example a simple tray made of corrugated cardboard, where the products are simply placed on the tray. However this solution is only suitable for compact and pressure resistant goods because it is normally necessary to stack several trays filled with products on top of each other during storage and transport to form a pallet. Since it is usually a practical requirement that at least two pallets can be stacked on top of each other, the products at the bottom of the stack may be subject to a relatively high load. Furthermore, with such a simple tray construction, dirt may soil the products or the products may be easily damaged during transport and storage.
Closed and semi-closed corrugated boxes have been used for more fragile products or to avoid soiling of the products during storage and transport. To allow quick placement of the products on the shelf by the supermarket staff, it is desirable that these boxes can be placed directly on the shelf after being opened to allow the buyers to take the products out. Corrugated boxes having a perforated line so that the top part of the box can be separated by tearing it off from the bottom part have been proposed. However tearing off the top part can be difficult and often leaves an unaesthetic rough edge to the bottom part of the box which stays on the shelf.
So called “tray and hood” packages have been proposed wherein a hood component is placed within a tray component. The hood component may be releasably attached to the tray component. EP1,864,913 discloses a tray and hood package with an opening in the top panel. U.S. Pat. No. 5,447,225 discloses a collapsible “tray and shroud” construction for easy transport and disposal. Other tray and hood packages have been proposed in the patent literature, for example see CH652096, EP571,711, U.S. Pat. No. 5,632,439 or U.S. Pat. No. 6,386,366.
Tray and hood packages are normally stacked to form easily transportable pallets, which can in turn be stacked on top of each other. Thus a relatively high load can be exerted on the boxes placed at the bottom of the stacks. This vertical load is either carried by the package itself, which has the inconvenience of necessitating relatively thick and strong cardboard material, which is expensive and wasteful, or by the products within the packages if the products are in load carrying contact with the top of the box, which is only suitable for compression resistant products that do not risk being damaged by a vertical load.
There remains a need for a convenient packaging for the transport and display of products, which uses less packaging material than previous solution and which can be used to transport products relatively sensitive to a vertical load.